


30 Years of Staffing Issues

by Caedmaeg



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A chattier Albus than you've ever seen, Behind the Scenes, Gap Filler, Gen, Missing Scene, One-sided dialogue, which looks a lot like a monologue but isn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 14:31:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7848763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caedmaeg/pseuds/Caedmaeg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We know that Galatea Merrythought retired before Tom Riddle could curse the DADA position; we know that Harry Potter had a new Defense professor every year he attended Hogwarts.  But what about all the professors in between?</p>
            </blockquote>





	30 Years of Staffing Issues

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: There’s debate over when exactly Dumbledore became Headmaster (somewhere between '65 and '71? but did he just keep teaching Transfiguration even after McGonagall started teaching in December 1956? What) and when Tom Riddle came back to ask him for the DADA job (after Dippet refused him in 1945 or thereabouts).
> 
> I’m handwaving all that to start off this list of unfortunate DADA professors in 1967, because it is Nice and Neat to have 30 of them. Unless you’re the one stuck hiring someone new every year.
> 
> I remain uncertain how open Dumbledore would be regarding the DADA jinx with a random Ministry employee, but the fact that there have been a succession of teachers is probably a matter of public record; I figure some wizards just graduate from Hogwarts and then get a bit of tunnel vision about their jobs and responsibilities and adult lives generally, and thus miss such goings-on.

Good afternoon, Caius.  Sherbet lemon?   

Yes, your owl mentioned the Ministry’s ability to provide Hogwarts with a new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.  However, I believe that to be unnecessary at this juncture, and in any case, I do not trust the judgment of those who elected to send Dolores Umbridge to this school.  If that is all -  
  
Ah.  I suppose you wouldn’t be as familiar with staff changes at Hogwarts in the decades since you graduated, would you.  Dolores is only one in a very long line of Defense professors, as we seem to have difficulties with staff retention in that department.

You may feel free to have the Ministry study it if you like, Mr. Casterbrook, but I’m afraid such a committee would only be wasting its time.  I am certain of the reason for the turnover rate, though I prefer not to publicize it overmuch.  It is already enough of a challenge to fill the post, though, as I have said, not insurmountable.  

...

That is certainly the case.  The truth is preferable to any lie, no matter how comfortable the lie may be, though even the truth must be wielded with caution.  

In truth, then: prior to the war against Tom Riddle - or, as most people know him, Lord Voldemort - Tom requested the Defense Against the Dark Arts professorship.  Unconvinced that he would teach any defense whatsoever, and fairly certain that he would attempt to recruit as many students as possible to join the ranks of his Death Eaters, I refused him the position and sent him on his way.  Unfortunately, he took that opportunity to upset our curriculum and the preparation of our students by placing a curse on the Defense post.

Indeed, this was after your time.  As I recall, you studied Defense Against the Dark Arts under Professor Bolingbroke?  Yes, an excellent woman.  Formidable.  I have never settled to my satisfaction whether Tom had any hand in her retirement or not.  In any case, Bolingbroke taught until 1967; after refusing Riddle the post, I was obliged to find another teacher in a hurry.  

The first person I found to fill the post was Trimalchio Jones.  An able teacher, but a more characteristic trait of his was how well he got on with Horace Slughorn.  He often joined Horace’s little feasts and parties, and attended a particularly lavish affair as exams ended.  It went for many hours.  When Jones was ready to take his leave, he took one last pheasant wing to nibble as he returned to his quarters; no one was there to witness him choking on it, but fortunately the Fat Friar brought his death to my attention before any students happened upon his body in the corridor.

It put Horace off of parties for a few years.  Even now he takes more care with what appetizers are offered.

In 1968, we hired Rosanna Touchstone.  She’d been a brilliant student, in her day, and had O’s on all 8 N.E.W.T.s.  The job suited her well enough, but by Easter she had applied to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, where she still works now.

So we took on Elephtheria Gilligan, who was very suitable until a run-in with a particularly wild Venomous Tentacula envenomated her wand arm.  I believe St. Mungo’s was able to rehabilitate her in the end, but it took some years and some rather experimental treatments.

Voxana Gilchrist came on in 1970; she was found in her quarters by a house-elf during exams.  To all appearances, she’d been strangled by the lacy, gently wafting curtains that adorned her windows.  We suspect that she had been targeted by would-be Death Eaters as a horrid rite of initiation.  There was no Dark Mark, but the traces on her room had all the familiar and terrible oiliness of dark magic.  

Her successor was Alfred Barclay, who most students found a bit dull, but who nonetheless taught very ably until the Easter holidays.  He came down with a particularly lingering case of dragon pox.  It didn’t kill him, but he did not return to school lest he prove a vector of infection.

In 1972, we convinced Juno Falconbridge to come on staff.  She was an excellent asset in increasingly dark times, until the very last: she was killed by Death Eaters in Hogsmeade, protecting the students from their curses with her last breath.  We cancelled Hogsmeade weekends for some years thereafter.

Nestor Petrides taught Defense the year after that.  He was a bit like Alastor Moody, in his way, emphasizing vigilance, practical experience, and a creative approach to self-defense.  Unfortunately he was incapacitated by one of his own experimental spells in the testing phase.

Francesca Burgundy took his place.  Over the course of the year, she developed a bit of a complex regarding the house ghosts, the Bloody Baron in particular.  We believe that James Potter and Sirius Black had some involvement, but remain unsure what actions they took, if any.  She resigned her post before the ending feast.

It was 1975 by that point, and we had particular trouble finding someone suitable for the position, as Voldemort’s ranks grew and committed ever more atrocities.  In the end, we hired Ivan Slenderfisher, who came highly recommended.  Unfortunately both he and his reference turned out to be Death Eaters.  On the bright side, his efforts to breach the castle wards to allow Voldemort in were foiled by a group of students who had just completed their O.W.L. testing; Misters Potter and Black headed up that band as well.  

Flavius Knightwick came after that.  He was interested in Petrides’ spellwork, and managed to find a way around the snag that had caught Nestor.  He then hit a series of different snags, which, when coupled with a broken Time-Turner, left us with an unsettlingly large puddle of blood on the 7th floor corridor and a missing Flavius.  Location charms on the blood led nowhere, indicating that he might have gotten trapped somewhere in the past or future.  

Miranda, his wife - or possible widow - was determined to follow in his footsteps, hoping to reunite with him in one way or other, and volunteered for the Defense job after his disappearance.  Sadly the year without closure took a toll on her mind, driving her to the edge of madness and draining her of her powers.  That would not have been fatal, except that she was led into a swamp by a hinkypunk while attempting to proctor the examination of the third-years.

I spent most of August 1978 convincing Aleric Warner to take the position.  He agreed, but come the end of the year, he was summoned to the Centaur Liaison office.  ...no, we didn’t sack him; he was just summoned by the Ministry.  The ensuing interview cast some aspersions on his parentage and he went to the Continent afterward to come to terms with what he’d learned.

Mortimer Graves was initially recommended in jest.  However, he was a very competent teacher all year, emphasizing both theory and practical application of a variety of disciplines.  He saw the students off to the thestral-drawn carriages at the end of the year, and we wondered if perhaps the twelve years of bad luck were at an end.  One of the Death Eaters then placed him under the Imperius curse, commanding him to open his veins to draw a Thestral, ride it to Azkaban, and hurl himself down to the roof.  

I had the unhappy task of going to retrieve him.

Such a horrifying event made it harder than ever to find a new member of staff, and I had reason to believe that the next year or two would call for even greater reserves of fortitude.  

We hired young Nathaniel Pitthouse in August of 1980, right after he graduated, taking care to warn him that the position might be detrimental to his health and well-being.  He very courageously took it on anyway, and did a reasonably good job of maintaining order in his classroom - though it must be admitted that the students who remained had every reason to work as diligently at Defense as possible.  At the end of the school year, he proposed to his Ravenclaw beau, and the two of them married and moved to London.

That was more felicitous than we expected, but it meant we needed a new professor when Voldemort was at his most terrifying.  Valerian Kirk came on, at the Ministry’s recommendation, and took up a curriculum very similar to Mortimer’s.  He did not strike anyone as particularly remarkable, which made it even more striking when some Unspeakables came to escort Kirk from the premises during the administration of the O.W.Ls.  As you might imagine, we did not receive a single illuminating word from them about it.

Thankfully, Voldemort had disappeared by that point, so we had an easier time come autumn of 1982.  Nerissa Peterson took the post, assigned an astonishing number of essays to all of her students, had a number of long conversations with Minerva and me, and left in June to write a book about the war.  

Icarus Sperling then took up the job.  His lessons were somewhat remedial, which we found a bit peculiar.  He also heavily emphasized the value of both flight and Transfiguration in assisting one’s capacity to fight or to flee from Dark wizards.  It transpired that he had spent years of the war in his Animagus form, which was a Peregrine falcon, to evade death or capture at the hands of the Dark Lord.  This worked in his favor except for the fact that he had a disconcerting penchant for eating mice, and one day flew too close to a Muggle aeroplane’s turbines.

Musidora Ophelia Cartwright replaced Sperling.  She had planned to use the year of teaching as a rest from her normal work in Egypt, and for a while, so it was.  Her students were quite impressed by the amount of curse-breaking she was able to teach them, as well as the visual aids she had to hand.  However, it seemed that she had not taken quite as many precautions as necessary on her latest excursion; a mummy somehow made its way up to Hogwarts and pursued her doggedly through the halls.  The rest of the staff was able to assist her in restraining and quieting it, but she returned with it to Egypt a month earlier than planned.

By autumn 1985, we were mildly desperate and took on Hildegard Brackenburg.  She had a very calming presence and emphasized theory perhaps a touch more than we generally prefer.  Her emphasis on the philosophy of defense hearkened back to Merrythought, and she did teach many of our stronger students to produce a corporeal Patronus. But she also spent a lot of time in reflection and spiritual struggle, and left to join a Muggle convent.  Since then she has sent me recordings of the chants she and her sisters sing; they are quite unearthly.

Hildegard also sent letters to her friend Holofernes Engelwright to convince him to take her place, which he agreed to do.  Peeves confirmed that Holofernes was a very sound sleeper, as he’d made a hobby of making increasingly loud noises until the professor woke up to banish him.  Engelwright vanished without a trace at the end of May.  We are not certain how it got in, but the prevailing theory is that he was consumed by a Lethifold as he slept.  

Pandora Desdemona Ravenlock came on at in September 1987.  The year was...a bit of a fiasco.  Imagine Gilderoy Lockhart, but with rather less content to communicate.  Ms. Ravenlock had a good deal of natural aptitude for self-defense, but was more inclined to discuss her cosmetic routines and preferred music than how to defend against the Dark Arts.  I was caught in a cloud of owls from angry parents demanding her resignation the day she revealed herself to be a vampire - to say nothing of the nigh-daily owls from the 5th years, who thought I might be unaware that she was a terrible teacher with an agonizing lecture style.  Minerva was particularly glad to see the back of her.

We hired Lucasta Lovelace to take her place, hoping for a bit less controversy.  That was certainly the case - Lucasta was a 62-year-old widow at that point, and unlikely to stir up quite so much emotion - but she was killed by a Pogrebin in the Forbidden Forest.  This raised up a whole lot of questions and inspired a serial in the Daily Prophet that I found to be in rather poor taste.

Alcibiades Gardiner asked for the job in 1989, did a very commendable job for 9 months, and was then struck by lightning.

Muriel Seyward followed Gardiner in 1990.  She’d done a stint of teaching at Beauxbatons, and thus had certain expectations of student comportment.  Unfortunately Misters Fred and George Weasley, who had had a whole year to familiarize themselves with the castle, upset her expectations with unseemly enthusiasm.  She resigned before Easter.

Quirinius Quirrell came in after that, after his years of traveling in Germany and Albania - oh, you’re already familiar with what befell Quirinius and everyone since?  I think you’re quite up to date, then. 

Professors come and go, Caius, and working in the school for some ninety-odd years _does_ tend to emphasize what changes and what does not.  Please bear in mind that I take the learning and the safety of my students very seriously – indeed, moreso than the Ministry, as I want them to have _some_ practical knowledge to show for their time in class – yes, even without Dumbledore’s Army making any further appearance.  Quite.  

We do not require assistance in finding a professor just yet.  I have a prospective candidate in mind; should he prove unmoved by my most persuasive efforts, rest assured I will contact you for a suitable replacement.  

Thank you, Caius.  Good afternoon!


End file.
